


Seventh Day of Christmas: Yule Shoot Your Eye Out

by unjaundiced



Series: Holiday Headaches [7]
Category: Naruto
Genre: 12 Days of Christmas, 12 Days of Fic, Bad Flirting, Dysfunctional Family, Explosives, Gen, Humor, Pre-Slash, Traditions, bad role models
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-11 20:33:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5640988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unjaundiced/pseuds/unjaundiced
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The epic clash of the Shabu Shabu King and the Nabe King... Things get 'splodey when <strike>ordnance</strike> fireworks get involved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seventh Day of Christmas: Yule Shoot Your Eye Out

Iruka breathed in the sharp fresh scent of pine as he ducked his head away from the annoying brush of long needles as he juggled a bundle of branches with angle-cut bamboo shoots. The house was an unsettling quiet, but the soft murmurs meandering down the hallway from the living room told him that at least there wasn't a house fire—at least there shouldn't have been. Somehow he still didn't trust Kakashi with responsible child care, even if Sasuke and Naruto weren't technically children anymore.  
  
“Tadaima,” he called as he entered the living room, looking down as he stepped over an empty ramen bowl, frowning as he did so. A stifled gasp had him looking up in sudden worry. “What—”  
  
“ _Monster_! You are a horrible, horrible _monster_ ,” Kakashi hissed, positioning himself to block Shisha-kun. He looked severely offended. “Don't look. It's just an illusion. Think happy thoughts.”  
  
Iruka sighed as he heard a frantic rustle of needles behind Kakashi's back. The jounin's eye narrowed and he jerked his head towards the window, obviously willing him to leave peacefully. He rolled his eyes and shook the bundle of pine branches at Kakashi.  
  
“If I told you I _found_ these branches on the ground, would that make you feel better?” He frowned as the jounin shook his head in firm denial.  
  
“It wouldn't and you are a stinking liar,” Kakashi growled. “Shame on you.”  
  
“Kakashi-sensei, you lie all the time,” Naruto piped up from where he was seated across Sasuke, waving a fist full of hanafuda cards in his face. Sasuke batted the hand aside.  
  
“Don't encourage him, Dobe. He's just messing with you,” Sasuke mumbled, matching several more cards. Naruto shrieked when he realised he was losing and forgot about his teachers.  
  
“Kakashi-sensei. Stop being ridiculous,” Iruka barked, freeing a hand to pinch the jounin's ear. Kakashi yelped as the pine needles jabbed at his face.  
  
“Okay! Okay, let go! Let go! You don't play fair!” Kakashi batted at the pine needles with over-exaggerated menace.  
  
“The problem is that you keep thinking I'm playing around!” Iruka slapped at his head as the jounin ducked away with a cheeky grin.  
  
“Iruka-sensei is always a lot of fun,” Kakashi purred, patting at the dolphin gingerbread decoration dancing on Shisha-kun's branches.  
  
“He'd be a lot more fun if a certain jounin didn't act like a pre-Academy student,” Iruka retorted, carefully setting the kadomatsu base next to Ukki-san. He slotted the pine branches into the proper places and slid a sly glance towards the Copy Nin, smirking at the sloe-eyed look he got in return.  
  
“I went to the Academy,” Kakashi mumbled, crossing his arms fitfully.  
  
“Barely,” Iruka snorted. He clapped his hands to gain the genin's attention. “Okay, boys! Bath time! You need to be clean for the new year!”  
  
Naruto grumbled and threw in his cards with a pout. He'd been losing anyhow. Sasuke smirked slightly as he raked in the cards and counted his chips. His pile of orange buttons was significantly larger than Naruto's and his air of superiority was noticeable from across the room. Kakashi snickered and waved him off towards the bathroom to lord over the ofuro, distracting him from noticing the tongue Naruto stuck at his back.  
  
“ _Now_ ,” Iruka chirped, clapping his hands excitedly. “Let's get the shabu shabu ready!”  
  
“Shabu shabu? _Nabe_ is for New Years, Iruka-sensei,” Kakashi countered with a frown.  
  
“No, _shabu shabu_ is. Nabe is for winter, but shabu shabu is for New Years,” Iruka insisted, frowning back.  
  
“ _Nabe_ , sensei.”  
  
“ _Shabu shabu_.”  
  
“ _Na-be_.” Kakashi crossed his arms.  
  
“ _Sha-bu sha-bu_.” Iruka fisted his hands at his hips and leaned in with menace.  
  
“ _Na. Be._ ” Kakashi twitched. Naruto scrunched his face up, looking pained.  
  
“Na, sensei... What is nabe and shabu shabu,” Naruto whined. “I don't understand what the big deal is!”  
  
“Naruto-kun, listen to me. Shabu shabu is better. Please tell this to Kakashi-sensei,” Iruka instructed carefully, waving a finger in a teacherly manner.  
  
“Naruto-ku, listen to _me_. Nabe is far better. Please educate Iruka-sensei. He is obviously confused,” Kakashi instructed, turning Naruto to face him.  
  
“Shabu shabu,” Iruka interjected, pulling Naruto away, jumping as the boy gave him a joyful hug at the attention.  
  
“Nabe,” Kakashi frowned again, reaching for Naruto who darted away.  
  
“Shabu shabu has the Shabu Shabu King,” Iruka said.  
  
“Nabe has the Nabe King,” Kakashi huffed. "Shabu shabu has the Shabu Shabu _Queen_."  
  
“Shabu shabu is a true sign of New Years,” Iruka insisted.  
  
“Nabe has more flavor,” Kakashi insisted back.  
  
“Shabu shabu is more subtle,” Iruka argued, tensing for a long fight.  
  
“Nnnn-abe!”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Let's do shabu shabu because Iruka-sensei said so and Iruka-sensei is _awesome_ ,” Naruto cut in. Kakashi hesitated, finding it hard to argue that point.  
  
“Nabe is better,” Sasuke grumbled from the bathroom, poking his head out the door to glare at Kakashi. He'd sensed a disturbance in the general will of the macrocosm and decided to assert at least a little resistance to the cause. “Nabe has all the elements representative of both the year's end and the new year's start.”  
  
“It's more meaningful when you add the ingredients one-by-one,” Iruka scolded gently.  
  
“Maa, let's just skip the normal fight and just go with both then,” Kakashi mumbled, looking vaguely towards the ceiling as he wandered off towards the hallway. “I have an extra wok pot anyhow.”  
  
“Pfft. Idiot.” Iruka snorted with amusement and pushed Naruto towards the bathroom. “Your turn.”

  
“I am the Shabu Shabu King so I'll lead, okay?” Iruka poured water into a wok-pot and gestured for Sasuke to heat it. Naruto nodded fervently. Kakashi rolled his eye skyward and muttered that the Nabe King was better. Iruka flicked a cube of daikon at his head in retaliation.  
  
“First you need to add dashi and konbu to the water as a soup base. You can add leeks for sweetness in case the dash—” Iruka broke off as Naruto started to hack at the dried fish, terrible memories of gingerbread flashing through his head. “Ah! Naruto-kun! I'll do that! Please, don't trouble yourself!”  
  
Kakashi snickered as Naruto pouted and stirred the water with a chopstick. Sasuke rolled his eyes and blew a little more heat into the fire, making his teammate jump back with an offended shout.  
  
“The konnyaku and glass noodles represent long life; a blessing for the new year,” Iruka continued, elbowing the loud boy aside so he could add the ingredients. “Cabbage for the bitterness that comes with life which mellow with time. Mushrooms for wealth and prosperity which can be difficult to find. Tofu for the history we all carry and for the transformations we all go through in life.”  
  
“What are the udon noodles for,” Sasuke asked, stirring his pot of soup. A sea of crab legs waved a greeting as they went in a circle.  
  
“To fill your stomach,” the chuunin responded with a cheeky wink. The Uchiha grunted in acknowledgment of the hit. “So says the Shabu Shabu King."  
  
“And the other stuff,” Naruto asked, sticking a chopstick into a piece of meat and another into a piece of sweet potato. The kotatsu looked like a tiny fairground of food with all the chopsticks the boy had stuck into things.  
  
“It tastes good,” Kakashi answered as he collected the chopsticks, rapping at Naruto's knuckles as the boy tried to touch some scallops with his fingers. “Less good if you keep it up. Listen to the Nabe King.”  
  
“It tastes best when you add miso at the end of the meal and drink the soup,” Iruka hummed to himself. He threw a sharp look at the jounin, tossing a scallop into the nabe pot at the same time. “Which is why _shabu shabu_ is better, Nabe Lackey.”  
  
“You're ruining it,” Kakashi mumbled, raising his hands innocently when Iruka pointed an accusing chopstick at him. “It all goes the same place. I thought we weren't going to fight about this anymore? Iruka-sensei, you want to start something?”  
  
“I'll show _you_ something,” the chuunin threatened, tossing a chunk of sweet potato into the nabe pot.  
  
“I can't wait.” Kakashi smiled in a way that was entirely too perverted for the genin's eyes, flipping a piece of fried tofu into the shabu shabu pot.  
  
“Hurry up and stop flirting,” Sasuke butted in. “I want to get to the part where we blow things up.”  
  
Iruka spluttered and stirred the shabu shabu pot vigorously, cheeks warming noticeably. Kakashi coughed, disguising the action as taking a bite of crab. Naruto looked curiously between his teachers, eyes squinted as his brain sluggishly attempted to make some very vague connections. He came up with oranges; an utterly confusing conclusion.

 

Dinner ended with a bang. Literally. Sasuke had gotten overexcited competing with Naruto over seeing who could make the soup hotter and had poured just a little too much chakra into the fire before he could be stopped. The group of shinobi had swung out the living room window, Kakashi clutching Ukki-san and Iruka lugging Shisha-kun with Naruto, emerging from a cloud of smoke still bickering over whether or not shabu shabu or nabe was better.  
  
Anko stood on the roof across the street with a handful of dango sticks and choked on a particularly chewy piece of mochi when she saw the billowing smoke and the _plants_. Her mouth moved up and down soundlessly as Kakashi shook his plant at Iruka who, with Naruto, shook the kuromatsu they carried in return. The orange-clad genin suddenly let go of his half of the pot, causing Iruka to stumble slightly at the weight shift, and lunged at the Uchiha boy next to him. She didn't notice with she let go of the sticks or the pattern they formed as they struck the ground.  
  
Under the ledge below, Ebisu sighed in relief, wiggling his toes happily, the dango sticks perilously close but not impaling. He leaned over the sticks and frowned at what they spelled out, casting a glance towards the figures on the roof. _Ka_ and _I_ under an umbrella? _Impossible._ He kicked the sticks over and smirked to himself, stepped out and into a pothole, stumbled into a stack of boxes and upset a stray cat. It might have been a ninbyou by the way it clawed his face in anger.  
  
Kakashi peered over the roof to the froth of smoke still billowing out from Iruka's house and hmmed thoughtfully. “Looks like that's a bust.”  
  
“That's my house down there,” Iruka growled, shifting Shisha-kun to his hip so he had a free hand to poke the jounin with.  
  
“Well, in any case, we can go blow stuff up for real,” Kakashi chirped back, fingers already activating the quick-release on one of his side pouch scroll holsters. Sasuke smirked in an entirely evil way when he saw the fire containment symbols written on it.  
  
“Kakashi-sensei, wait!” Iruka cursed as the jounin dashed away followed by the two genin. Curious shinobi and ANBU clustered on the rooftops to watch the New Years fireworks, a multitude of eyes following the group of shinobi and their plants dashing willy-nilly across the rooftops towards Hokage Monument.  
  
The first explosions lit the sky as the Inuzuka clan took the lead. A series of bright lights streaked skyward and burst into a march of pawprints as another ball burst into the shape of a piece of meat. Howls cut the air as the Inuzuka cheered the on Akimichi clan. A series of flower bursts marked the Yamanaka contribution and danced away as the Nara took control.  
  
Spears of earth shot skyward and burst into gobs of flame, exploding upon themselves in belching gulps as the dust ignited and re-ignited itself. Blue bursts of chakra danced skyward to encourage the fire shower. In the shadows of the bursts of light, a sextet of shadows hopped upwards, bouncing back and forth across the tiered roofs of the Hokage Tower building. Tsunade waved a rather large bottle of sake at them as they passed, staring blearily at the expressions of light and sound painting her village.  
  
Kakashi giggled as he raced ahead, flipping the scroll in his hand. Sasuke dug his hands into his pocket to pull out a similarly marked scroll and darted to the roof just aside the main one. Naruto shouted a challenge and darted after him. Iruka rolled his eyes, hefted Shisha-kun higher and picked up the pace.  
  
He came upon the jounin just as he lay Ukki-san on the ridge of pipe that carried the power lines in a halo across the roofing planks. His head cocked curiously as Kakashi flung the scroll open and nicked a finger, twitching slightly at the sight of the blood. A series of shrieks went up in concert with a sudden succession of cannon fire as Sasuke's fireworks went up in a marching fountain of Katon Goukakyuu that lit the sky in a blaze of orange.  
  
Iruka looked up briefly in appreciation before a soft settling sound drew his attention again. Highlighted by flashes of color, Kakashi produced a tube almost as tall as he, red warnings, dark in the gloom, painted up and down its length. He rolled his eyes and set Shisha-kun gingerly next to Ukki-san before going to stand by the jounin who was busy admiring his new toy.  
  
“You'll shoot your other eye out,” Iruka commented, running a finger down the launch tube.  
  
“Maa, sensei. You have a dirty mind,” Kakashi smirked, hooking an arm around Iruka's and leading him away from the _cannon_ he'd produced.  
  
“I do not,” Iruka grumbled, pushing at the jounin. “It's your dirty mind that makes you have delusions. You really should have it looked at. I know of a good Yamanaka who'd be all-too ready to help.”  
  
“You are too kind, yet again,” Kakashi purred sweetly as he pushed the chuunin into a sitting position.  
  
“So when are you setting it off,” Iruka asked, eying the phallic object dominating Hokage Tower.  
  
“At the optimal time, of course. After everyone else is finished showing off.” Kakashi stretched out next to him with a cheeky smile.  
  
“So... late then. Per usual.” Iruka looked aside as another succession of explosions marked Naruto trying his hand with Sasuke's pyrotechnic toy. “Be careful or you'll lose a finger!”  
  
“Naa, I'm okay, sense—AAAAHHHH!!!” Naruto ran around in circles, small flames licking at his finger, surging over the punk he was using to light the fireworks.  
  
“Oh, Naruto....”

  
  
It was a hair towards midnight when the fireworks display really heated up, turning the sky bright as day and white with smoke. Shinobi glowed on rooftops as they burned chakra to light ordnance, their positions marked by Tsunade who reminded herself to have a chakra-use re-education session issued to everyone. She swayed and waved her bottle as the clock counted down towards midnight, stumbling over Ton Ton who squealed and tried to jump on the chair so she could see out the window.  
  
The air seemed to tighten as the explosions sucked the oxygen from the sky, breaking over the land in a torrent. The residents of Konoha screamed as the clock crawled towards midnight and the temple bells rung out, deep sonorous gongs announcing the coming year change. Everything was silent for a breath, each person pausing to light the long red strings of firecrackers that welcome the new year when it happened.  
  
Kakashi leaned forward and, with a casual flick of his fingers, flung a spark towards the cannon-pipe he'd set up. It ignited instantly, fuse racing to its end.  
  
Iruka snorted at that, leaning back to watch the coming show. “Show off.”  
  
Kakashi's reply was lost as his firework tore the very air from the sky, sucking it away before it exploded upward and outward in a screaming fountain of starbursts that made the other light shows look like dim bulbs in comparison. Chakra bombs burst in air. Great eating arcs of lightning danced across the clouds and painted pictures in the sky. Fire limned the clouds and burned the moon, racing its lightning twin to crowd out the other displays. Staccato bursts of noise punctuated smaller bursts of lights that turned into shinobi fighting. A massive henohenomoheji plastered itself across the other displays and winked saucily, causing shinobi all across Konoha to groan. Words danced across the tie-dyed canvas of the sky in a question and Iruka laughed heartily.  
  
_Impressed yet?_

**Author's Note:**

> These were originally written for the 12 Days of Christmas Challenge on Livejournal in 2010, starting with the first day of Christmas (December 25). It's basically all crack and I apologise for nothing.
> 
>  **Notes**  
>  Konbu – dried seaweed, similar to kelp  
> Dashi – dried mackerel, usually either ground or as flakes to top rice or be used as a soup base. It's salty.  
> Konnyaku – long translucent noodles made from yam  
> Katon Goukakyuu – Grand Fireball  
> Ninbyou - ninja cat  
> Shabu Shabu – hot pot with the ingredients added and removed during the course of the meal  
> Nabe – hot pot with the ingredients added all at once and eaten thereafter
> 
> Shabu Shabu King vs. Nabe King – Technically only “Nabe King” is an actual title. A “Shabu Shabu King” would more likely to be known as a “Shabu Shabu Queen” since this is usually orchestrated by the female head of the household [but can also be a free-for-all for everyone at the table] whereas the Nabe King tends to be the male head of the household. The Nabe King is the one who dictates what goes in and when and all food [and even the soup] must be to his specifications. It is his ideal soup. At wintertime [or New Years] he may tell the importance of each item as it goes into the pot as a traditional teaching lesson.


End file.
